Social distancing at airports would mean kilometre-long queues to board each jumbo jet, Heathrow's chief executive has said.

John Holland-Kaye warned the UK's major airports do not have enough space for social distancing to be a solution to safe travel after the coronavirus lockdown ends.

"Forget social distancing, it won't work in aviation or any other form of public transport, and the problem is not the plane, it is the lack of space in the airport," he wrote in the Daily Telegraph.

"Just one jumbo jet would require a queue a kilometre long."

Millions of jobs need Heathrow 'up and running'

The world's largest passenger plane, the A380 - used by many of the world's airlines - seats about 500 passengers.

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Instead of implementing social distancing at airports, Mr Holland-Kaye called on Boris Johnson to quickly find a "common international standard" of alternative solutions that could be ready by the summer.

He said that should include mandatory health checks for passengers and "fantastic levels of hygiene" in airports to keep the risk of infection during journeys "very low".

Heathrow's boss, who has sacrificed his salary for three months, said aviation is the "cornerstone of the economy" and that 40% of annual exports from the UK are transported on passenger flights from Heathrow.

"If those planes aren't flying, UK factories can't get the parts they need and nor can they get their finished goods to market," he said.